More central funds for Uttar Pradesh?

The Uttar Pradesh government spent the lowest in 6 years but the Samajwadi Party may manage to extract another Rs 8,200 crore from the Centre, thanks to the party's cosy relations with the UPA. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 17, 2013, 02:40:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Uttar Pradesh government may get Rs 8,200 crore more from the Centre despite lowest spending in the last six years, thanks to Samajwadi Party's cosy relations with the UPA government that is surviving on a thin majority.

SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week seeking more money for the state and the Centre was more than willing to oblige.

The Planning Commission and the Uttar Pradesh government are likely to agree on Rs 66,000 crore for the 2013-2014 plan on Thursday when chief minister Akhilesh Yadav meets panel's deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The allocation for 2012-13 was Rs 57,800 crore.

The panel obliquely pointed out Akhilesh government's low expenditure as compared to Maywati's five years as the CM. The UP government was able to spend only 86.14% in 2012-13, the first full financial year of Akhilesh government, as compared to average 97.2% in five years of the Mayawati government, official records state.

What had irked the panel is the state's poor performance in the Centre's flagship programmes. As on November 2012, the balance fund available with the state government was Rs 10,400 crore and the expenditure was abysmally low on Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana, National Horticulture Mission, National Rural Health Mission and Central Rural Sanitation Programme.

The UP government said the expenditure was low as fund spending was spread across 55,000 panchayats but the plan panel wants the state to have better fund management.

The panel officials also said that of the Rs 700 crore given under Backward Regions Grant Fund, the state was able to spend only Rs 207 crore. But, the political push for UP could be the reason for UP expected to get Rs 700 crore again from the fund devised to eradicate backwardness in the states.

The panel has another advice for the state government, which it may not find politically convenient. The panel wants Akhilesh government to adopt Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's model for reducing electricity losses and adopt solar energy for productive use of waste lands.

The state has also come under criticism from the panel for poor track record on school education. As per 2012 ASER report, only 13.7% schoolchildren cannot read letters and 30.6% can read letters but not words.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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